RUSSIA: But Nobody Outsells G.U.M.

Inside the huge store, the crowd was so thick
that the militia stood by to keep order. Peasants in tanned-sheepskin
coats and felt boots, city matrons in mouton-collared coats stared in
awe at yard upon gleaming yard of silks and satins produced by Soviet
textile plants. In the 36 years of Communist rule, they had never seen
anything like it.

The big textile sale at G.U.M., Moscow's massive principal department
store, was the flashiest display yet in the new Soviet campaign to
bolster morale at home with consumer goods long denied by the bleak
succession of five-year plans. G.U.M. has...